


take my heart

by ObscureReference



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: M/M, Magical Realism, Sleeping Beauty Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-17
Updated: 2017-07-17
Packaged: 2018-12-03 04:34:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11524659
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ObscureReference/pseuds/ObscureReference
Summary: “I’m outside,” Noctis says on the other end of the phone, breathless, and Prompto doesn’t bother hanging up before he’s out the door. It’s three in the morning, and he’s wearing sweatpants that fit better when he was a few pounds heavier and a few inches shorter. The cold bites at his skin when he throws the door open.“Hey,” Noct says like he hasn’t just snuck out in the dead of night. Like his eyes aren’t darting to the road every time the streetlight flickers.





	take my heart

**Author's Note:**

> I did a fairytale au for Ignis and Gladio, and I wanted to do one for Noctis too, but for some reason it just wasn't coming, so this one is way shorter than the others. I somehow finished it, even though I didn't think I would.
> 
> I promise I'm working on the next "(had me feeling like a) ghost" update; this was just a tiny thing I finished while summer school is kicking my ass.

“I’m outside,” Noctis says on the other end of the phone, breathless, and Prompto doesn’t bother hanging up before he’s out the door. It’s three in the morning, and he’s wearing sweatpants that fit better when he was a few pounds heavier and a few inches shorter. The cold bites at his skin when he throws the door open.

“Hey,” Noct says like he hasn’t just snuck out in the dead of night. Like his eyes aren’t darting to the road every time the streetlight flickers.

He’s wearing regular clothes and no jacket. If Prompto’s freezing as it, Noctis has to be feeling the chill.

Prompto doesn’t ask what’s up; he just throws the door open wider and gestures inside. “Come in here, dude.”

But Noctis shakes his head. “No, they’ll be looking for me.”

“Ignis?” Prompto asks, but Noct doesn’t answer. So he asks, “What’s going on?”

There’s a tenseness to Noctis’ body that Prompto would recognize anywhere, a clipped tone in his voice that makes him uneasy. Noctis rolled something between his fingers before holding out his hand.

“Can you look after something for me?”

“Yeah, of course,” Prompto says without thinking. “Whatever you need.”

He is, admittedly, a little freaked out.

He takes the thing from Noctis’ hand and finds it’s a ring. It’s familiar. He’s seen Noctis wear this for years, but this is the first time he’s ever held it like this.

“Keep this close,” Noctis pleads. His fingers linger against Prompto’s skin, warmer than Prompto thought they should have been. “Look after it for me.”

“I will,” Prompto says. He shifts his weight, very aware of how cold the night is and how much he wants Noctis to come inside. “Are you sure you can’t—”

But Noctis isn’t looking at him. He’s looking over his shoulder at the flickering streetlight again. “I have to go. I’ll see you soon. Thanks.”

And then he’s gone and it’s just Prompto looking out into the dark.

 

 

He goes back upstairs. His parents aren’t home, and his footsteps echo on the stairs more than he thinks they should.

When he reaches his bed, he’s still holding the ring so hard it cuts into his palm. He’s wide awake now. Noctis’ anxiety is contagious, and Prompto always has more than enough to spare.

He considers placing the ring on his bedside table, but something nags at him. So he finds a necklace chain instead—an old, bare one he’d taken from his mother’s drawer when he was younger, not that she had seemed to notice—and slides the ring onto that instead. The necklace hangs loose around his neck.

When he lays down to sleep, he notices how much colder his room seems than it had before.

 

 

In the morning he wakes up to twenty different alerts on his phone that can all be summed up as Something Went Very Wrong Last Night.

The Citadel is on media blackout. The King is alive but has yet to make a formal announcement. Suspects have been taken into custody, and Lucis officials are still searching for the perpetrators of yet unnamed illegal activity. No word on the prince.

He calls Ignis. He’s sure Ignis has too much to do, that he won’t pick up, but he does. Ignis answers the phone, and the first words out of his mouth are, “Noctis is fine.”

Prompto’s breath catches in his throat. “Fine?”

A pause.

“There have been some… complications.”

 

 

“Complications” turns out to be very complicated and simple all at once.

Prompto doesn’t get to see Noctis. Not on the first day and not on the second. He paces and goes to class and takes notes he’s not sure Noctis will need. He clutches at the ring around his neck and tries not to let his anxiety get the best of him, even when he’s sitting on his bed shaking and he can’t see the phone screen in his hands because the numbers have gone too blurry.

A week passes before Ignis sneaks him into Noct’s room, possibly out of pity. Prompto suspects his presence in the prince’s rooms is illegal. He doesn’t ask, and Ignis doesn’t say.

Noctis looks like something right out of a storybook. His chest rises and falls under the covers, and if not for the machine by the bed and the fact he hasn’t woken up in over a week, Prompto would think he was sleeping.

“Is he…” He can’t finish his sentence.

“They suspect it’s his Heart,” Ignis says, and Prompto nods because that makes sense. People can’t function without their Hearts. Everyone has one, except for Prompto. Not that anyone knows that. He does have a barcode on his wrist, though, so maybe that counts for something.

Hearts were precious and secret and necessary, and Noctis’ Heart is missing.

Ignis says, “They suspect it was taken the night of the infiltration. I had instructed Noctis to go somewhere safe as Gladio and I were indisposed, but…”

There are a lot of things that “but” can mean. Prompto lets it hang there.

Ignis looks tired. There are rings around his eyes that aren’t hidden with his normal concealer, and there were at least three empty Ebony cans in the trash near Ignis’ desk when Prompto arrived. He knows the feeling.

Ignis gets a call and he nods at Prompto before stepping out of the room, and then it’s just Prompto alone with sleeping beauty.

He almost doesn’t want to get closer to see the damage, but he’s been aching for Noctis for a week. His feet lead him over to the bed. A lock of hair had fallen into Noctis’ eyes at some point, but Prompto doesn’t have the courage to brush it out of his face. Not when he doesn’t know if Noctis would ever be okay again. Not when someone out there has taken Noctis’ Heart.

They couldn’t have destroyed Noctis’ Heart because Noctis would have been dead if that were the case, but Prompto still feels gross on behalf of the prince. Someone out there who wasn’t Noctis was touching his Heart and probably planned on doing something really evil with it.

Prompto shuddered at the thought. Mere inches away from his fingertips, Noctis slept on.

A Heart can look like anything, can _be_ anything, and even if they hadn’t destroyed it, there was someone out there in the world with a Heart that didn’t belong to them. A spy could have easily crossed the border with an extra book or a feather or a bracelet or….

Prompto frowns.

He has an idea.

It’s a stupid, untrue idea, but something inside Prompto tells him to try it.

He takes off his necklace. The chain is old and kind of shitty and Prompto hasn’t removed it since he put it on a week ago, so it takes a minute. It comes off. He slides the ring off the chain, and even with Ignis just outside the door and Prompto’s heart hammering away in his chest, he slips the ring on Noctis finger. It fits perfectly.

Nothing happens.

Prompto curses himself for being such a stupid, stupid nobody who could think for even one second that Noctis would hear Ignis say, “Go somewhere safe,” and would smuggle his Heart to Prompto under everyone’s noses. That would take a lot of trust he doesn’t quite deserve.

Then Noctis groans. His eyes flutter open, and the first thing he sees is Prompto’s happy, dumbstruck face staring back at him.

“What the hell?” he grouses. “My back hurts.”

Prompto sniffs wetly. “That’s because you’ve been laying down for the past week, you jerkface.”

Noctis looks down and notices, perhaps for the first time, that Prompto is holding his hand. He squeezes back and smiles.

“Oh, hey,” Noctis says, easygoing and playful. “You brought it back.”

It feels as though Prompto’s heart is going to explode. He can’t look anywhere but Noctis’ sunlit face. His throat has gone dry.

“Of course,” he says. “You can always count on little ol’ me.” He’s not sure he fakes sounding like he’s not about to cry very well. He bites his bottom lip. “It was.” Awful, actually, even though he hasn’t seen Noctis until just now. Especially because of that. “You know, you really scared us, man.”

Noctis threads their fingers together. He isn’t looking anywhere except Prompto’s face either.

“I always knew you’d be okay,” he says, sounding genuine even though he’s wrong. “I trust you.”

“Apparently.”

Prompto kind of wants to lean down and peck Noctis’ cheek or something, but he’s not sure his heart can take that kind of thing right now. He settles for brushing that lock of hair out of Noctis’ face instead.

“So, I guess you could say…” He pauses dramatically, and Noctis looks like he’s about to groan again, like he can feel it coming. “I stole your heart?”

Then Noctis does groan. It’s loud enough to alert Ignis, who suddenly stops talking into his phone and throws the door open, but even his concerned questions can’t keep Prompto from laughing as Noctis squeezes his hand again, hard enough that he can feel the imprint of the ring in his skin.

**Author's Note:**

> *Noctis voice* Go back to sleeping, beauty.
> 
> Feel free to leave a comment below or hmu at my [tumblr!](http://someobscurereference.tumblr.com/)


End file.
